Unrequited
by Seraphim Grace
Summary: The thoughts of two men meeting in a hotel room, from both points of view, Crawford and Ran (complete)
1. Ice

**Unrequited**

by Nightwing

Part one

Ice

Even after all this time I can't get away. Sometimes I wonder if it's your chill that draws me in. You have ice to match my own. Nothing warms the dark crevices of your heart. Not even me, I fear, even after all this time. I feel your eyes upon me, eyes like fragments of ice so ancient that they have never seen the sun, as blue as the deepest seas in which I could drown. And I know that your plots concern me; your machinations include me; but there is no fire in your blood for me.

I hate you as much as I want you.

Even after all this time I am caught; your ice holds me in place as if I am frozen.

How could it not? Your heart is as cold as mine.

I'll never let you see that you can hurt me. I'll never show you that weakness. You are never weak; you never fail; even your smugness is cold. Everything about you is cold and in your eyes I am dying.

Even after all this time, you alone have the power to hurt me. I'll never let you see that I live and die in your ice.

It would be easier for me if you were dead.

It would be easier if I had the strength to kill you.

It would be easier if I had the strength to live without you.

The room is a chasm between us. It's just a cheap hotel room. They are all the same, sterile. Only the location ever changes.

You sit at the small desk finishing the day's labours - the work you had not completed before this appointment.

As cold as you are you are never late.

I sit on the edge of the bed as nervous as a virgin, even after all this time.

Part of me says to break the ritual, to force you to down your pen, to make you notice me in more ways than the physical. I never do.

Even after all this time.

What would you do if I stood up, crossed this small hotel room and put my arms around your chest and laid my head on your shoulder?

What would you do if I let you know that I need this; that I need you?

I fidget. I wait, though patience physically pains me. I want you to lay down your pen and notice me, to put aside the work you brought here and to notice me.

I say nothing.

I do nothing.

I just sit on the edge of the bed and fidget.

Are you even aware of the dilemma you cause me?

I dare not step up from my wary vigil and cross my arms about your chest, lay my head on your calm shoulder and kiss your soft earlobe the way that I want to. It's dangerous.

Whatever this agreement is, it's fragile.

I may be wanting but I am no fool.

Your taste suffocates me.

I drown in your smell.

Your touch burns.

And through it all you are turned away, your dark head lowered as your pen skritches on the papers your brought with you.

As much as I want to take the three steps that will put me behind your chair. As much as I want to sweep those papers to the floor I never will.

It's too late for me now.

I try to remember when this began, when I learnt that the ice in your veins meant that your kisses would burn. I can't remember when your cold disdain began to mean so much to me.

At first you had to hold something over me to make me come, you had to threaten, to bribe, to cajole.

But although you still say the words we both know you don't need to anymore.

It has gone beyond that for me now.

I couldn't escape if I wanted to.

I don't want to.

I doubt that I'll ever want to.

Even at your coldest your skin becomes slick with passion, even when your kisses taste of duty your skin reveals your truths to me. You enjoy this as much as I, though you never let me see. I do anything you ask, for the feel of your sweat stuck to mine.

For the susurration of your skin on mine.

For the lingering of your taste in my mouth.

I do anything you ask.

Do you still believe it's because I have to or do you realise that it's because I want to.

You have finished whatever it is that you labour at, whatever it is you consider so important that you bring here, to this time you share with me.

You turn in the chair so you rest your arm on it's back and say my name. You have begun the litany.

My name in your mouth is like an electric shock coursing through my body. It never fails to catch me unawares. Your eyes try to lock me in place as I stand, as you have trained me to do, and begin to unbutton my shirt.

Your disdain burns like ice.

How would you react I wonder if I broke the litany, that, instead of undressing so mechanically before undressing you, I reacted. If I took your earlobe between my lips, the way that I dream of doing, if brought my teeth down on your skin and dragged my bitter fingernails along the broad even planes of your back. If at the last I met your gaze with mine?

I never will.

I always consider it?

But in the end I lack the courage.

It's too late now.

The world could end and all I would know is the slightly sticky feel of your sweat and the lingering frostbite of your kisses.

I want this to be over.

I never want this to end.

I want you to stop touching me.

I never want you to stop.

I want you to look at me with desire in your eyes.

I always want to be the hunger you must slake.

What would it cost, I wonder, to turn my head from where your kisses chill my neck

and to touch your lips to mine?

Even after all this time, after all I have surrendered to you, we have never kissed on the mouth.

You tumble me backwards unto the bed.

You are reliable, sensible, dependable and cruel.

You're all I ever wanted.


	2. Disdain

**Unrequited**

by Nightwing

Part two

Disdain.

I can't look at you. I know how you sit - how you always sit, at the edge of the bed with your legs stretched out in front. You lay your forearms along your thighs, you hands between your knees. Your head is cast down. You stare at the floor. Even now you don't look at me, always away: at the floor, the walls, the windows of these faceless hotel rooms. I don't think I could stomach the disdain in your eyes right now.

I am immune to any power you have over me but that.

How could anyone sustain the disdain in your beautiful unusual eyes.

Next to your beauty I feel insignificant.

I'd rather you didn't look at me at all than with such disdain.

I do everything in my power to avoid looking at you for as long as I can. The very sight of you gives me thrills, as cool and calm as marble. To think that your beauty is mine to explore brings a lump to my throat. To see your throat blush in passion or anger, all the tiny capillaries expanding and dilating revealing you despite yourself.

These thoughts infest me.

They are useless. You don't want this. These meetings I keep faceless to preserve what little control I have around you.

You never wanted this.

You never wanted me.

I can make your body react to mine, but I can't take the disdain from your violet eyes.

More than anything I want to sweep these papers to the floor. Amidst all the important documents I never touch are Nagi's homework to be checked and a crossword. I brought them only so I could avoid looking at you.

I want to dash them to the floor. To throw this charade to the wind. To walk over to you and push you back unto the bed. To press your lips to mine until they are swollen and your neck is flushed.

Your disdain holds me in check, so I complete my crossword feeling the weight of you as you breathe behind me.

Your presence makes this quite large room uncomfortably small.

How would you reach if I did. If I turned and overturned this wooden chair. If I caught you in my arm and laid my head against your neck just to smother in your scent, fresh sweat and earth and flowers. The irresistible smell of you.

If I pushed you to the bed and held you in my arms as tight as a vice? Would you accept it as part of this? Would you push me away? Would your deep voice urge me to get on with it, to end these games between us?

How could I cope lying there hold you if you were a dead weight in my arms? It is better this way because then I don't feel the weight of your disdain.

There is a word in English for these kinds of relationships: unrequited.

Did I ever tell you that I dream of you? That I dream of you lying in my bed, not a nameless sterile hotel bed, but mine, and you are on your stomach asleep. I trace the ridges of your spine with my fingertips. Like this, it never changes.

How much more of this can I stand?

I want to touch you, kiss you, bury my face in your hair, feel your hands on me. I want more than this.

But your disdain weighs on my like an albatross around my neck.

This, between us, must suffice.

Still you sit motionless on the bed, like a marionette with it's strings cut. Whatever thoughts run through your head are yours alone. There is no intimacy between us that I might even ask.

You think your own thoughts and I think mine and even if we wanted to neither of us would ever change this.

You are caught by duty and honour.

And I, I am held by desire.

How can I stand it? Being so close to you and yet so far apart. I have never been so far from you as when you are close enough that I can almost feel your breath on my neck and taste the veracity of your silence.

I will never be as lonely as I always am with you.

I suppose I could end this at any time. That when this meeting is over, when the passion you cause me is catalogued and stored for days when I am strong enough to stomach it. When you emerge from the shower, all traces of me washed from your skin with a generic hotel brand soap. Then I could change the litany between us.

I could not remove and polish my glasses to better appraise you fresh from the shower. I could not lift my empty coffee cup and remind you of your obligation to me. I could let you go. I could free you and never feel the crippling weight of the disdain in your eyes boring into my back.

I never would.

I don't think I could.

In my imagination I dare to kiss you. With a swing of my arm I send these papers to the floor. I cast the chair down as I stand. In my imagination this overt display of my desire amuses toy. I have never heard you laugh so I dream of it often.

In my dream you cast your head back and laugh, and I am not offended. I laugh with you, and laughing with an at each other we tumble to the bed, laughing. In my dream there is no seriousness to our passion.

I am not a fool nor a foolish man. It is your laughter I seek, your affection I have long considered a prize. I could never attain. I would happily settle for desire, instead you only show me disdain.

Even your disdain has become dear to me.

I torture myself with an image of you something I would only have to suggest and you would oblige me with. That is how you interpret the accords of our agreement. I imagine you naked and waiting for me, licking your thin lips in anticipation with a length of black lace ribbon over your eyes.

Not a blindfold, but lace, so you can see.

I imagine it against the white of your skin and the startling red of your hair. I do not wish to tie you, to keep you here at my will by any force other than that which we have agreed on. Though you would oblige me.

I can't stand much more of this.

Does it pain you as much as it thrills me when our bodies betray us and seeks bonds, when passion and heat sticks us together like glue.

What goes through your head I wonder, when you cast your head to the side and the flush runs across your throat.

Do you hate me at that moment?

Do I even stir that much passion in you that you could hate me? Even then?

The awkwardness has gone on long enough. Silence reached out only so far before it snaps and awkward things are said with the sole intention of breaking the silence.

I gather up my papers in a neat pile before I turn in the chair in which I have sat imagining you, sketching all over my crossword so I wouldn't have to think of you on the edge on the bed, waiting for me.

"Ran," I say your name deliberately, glad it is short on my tongue that I does not catch on my teeth and forces me to stumble. I say your name quickly that it does not undo me.

You stand up. Your expression is impassive and with precise white hands you begin to unbutton your shirt.

I can't stand this.

I must withstand this.

Your cold precise movements horrify me. There is never a sign that you want this - that this is not another obligation for you to meet. If I said I wanted to undress you then you would oblige me.

I don't want you to oblige me.

I want you to want me to.

Your disdain is driving me mad.

What would it take for you to say my name. You never do. You never make a noise, no matter how hard I try. In all this time, both inside and outside of these assignations, you have never said my name.

I would happily cut you in two to just once, once, hear you say my name, even if it was only to tell me to stop.

I have tried everything that I know and I cannot make you say my name. If you I did would let you go, there is no way you could know that. I would set you free, no matter how it would pain me if only you would say my name.

I kiss your neck tracing the line of your jaw as my hands find the sleek curve of your arms. Part of me wants to make you a statue, that I could just sit and admire your beauty, the other craves your taste, your touch, your swallowed sighs, your furtive blushes.

You are a danger, I could so easily give everything up for you, if only you knew to ask.

More than anything I want to kiss you on the mouth. To feel your thin lips with mine. To touch your tongue with mine. It is the only intimacy you have not surrendered. I wonder if you want me to claim it or if it is the last straw that will bring this house of cards tumbling down.

I should let you go. If this feeling that sits so uncomfortably in my chest is love then I should end this. I should walk away and make no more appointments; book no more hotels. I should cope with my memories an dreams of you.

Your disdain paralyses me, however, and I make no move to end this.


	3. Sleep

**Unrequited**

by Nightwing

Part three

Sleep

I lie in the bed next to you listening to the accelerated rate of my heart beat and the raspy awareness of your breath. It is amazing how even in the tight enclosures of a bed that continents can span between us.

There are many questions between us.

You lie on your back, pleasantly sated, all wariness drawn from your pale skin, and stare at the ceiling in the weak light from the desk lamp.

If I was an artist this is how I would paint you, recumbent after sex, sated and comfortably pleased, but distant as thoughts flit through your head. In the weak lamp light the ridges of your ribs are limned, like you have been dipped in gold.

You never object to me staring at you.

I often do, after, I drink you in and do my best to memorise every detail when you sleep, and for some reason you feel safe enough in my presence to sleep. I never do, terrified that I'll wake up and find that you're gone. I lie on my side and watch you breathe.

Aya-chan came to see me today.

I am lying on my side facing you watching as your breath settles and the flush pales from your cheeks. Your hands are still reflexively clenching the sheet and your eyes are glassy. I love you best at this moment as pleasure wars with disdain on your delicate features before sleep pulls you under.

She slapped me, did I tell you that?

I have left a mark on your neck. I can see the ridges of my teeth where I bit you. I'm sorry for it, I didn't mean to hurt you.

She called me a fool.

I am testing conversations with you. It has been two years and we have never managed to have a conversation. I have imagined many with you, from comfortable breakfasts to drunken evenings and even jealous fights. We have never spoken at length.

She said you loved me.

Your nails have left weals down my back and there is a heaviness in my limbs that is not unlike sleep. I can see you slipping away from me, away from the conversation we'll never have. Sleep is pulling you down and I am torn.

You look so peaceful when you sleep.

"Ran," I say your name.

You struggle and fight sleep, throwing yourself unto your side and appraise me with violent eyes. You say nothing.

She said I was tearing you apart.

I reach behind me and turn off the desk lamp. Beyond the vast landscape of this small bed Tokyo labours. It is born and it dies. There is a song in my head. I don't know the words. It is irrelevant.

There are no words between us.

There never were.

She said I either had to claim or leave you.

It is easier in the darkness.

In the darkness I can close my eyes and pretend that I can't see the cool disdain in your eyes.

I reach forward, and clumsily, I kiss you.

It is awkward at first, two unfamiliar faces trying to find the best way to fit together, but soon I don't care. I twine my fingers through yours and kiss you.

To my complete surprise you kiss me back.


End file.
